Kazakhstan may be the first country in the Caspian region to launch fifth-generation or “5G” wireless services!
This was how the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Askar Mamin, had announced in May 2019 the government’s intention to roll out the latest wireless technology across the largest country in Central Asia.
It can hardly be easy to carry wireless, high-speed internet and mobile services across the vast plains of a country that, in terms of surface area, is second only to Russia within the Commonwealth of Independent States and the ninth largest in the world… Communications experts were to launch a pilot project at the end of 2019 in the capital Nur-Sultan, as well as in the southern city of Shymkent and in Almaty, the former capital and largest city of Kazakhstan. However, the pandemic did not really allow this pilot project to begin, or at least so it seems; perhaps that is our watching without comment at this stage…
In the first statements made in May 2019, the Prime Minister’s website had carried the words “In general, the 5G network is expected to cover all settlements with a population of more than 50,000”.
In line with the President’s decisions and the direction of the planning, work is under way to build a 5G network in Kazakhstan. The roadmap has been approved. The testing of 5G mobile communications in Nur-Sultan and Almaty has already been completed, and we plan to hold it in Shymkent soon. According to the test results, an analysis will be made of the possibilities of using the technology in the Internet of Things (IoT), TeleMedicine, the digitalisation of industry and the development of smart cities,” he said. Because of the large investment required for the first stage, 5G technology will initially be implemented in the cities of national significance – Almaty, Shymkent and the capital.
In the capital, the introduction of 5G technology by the end of 2021 is planned at Nazarbayev University and (the former exhibition grounds); in 2022, 5G should appear at the airport, the railway station, large shopping centres and venues. Later, in 2023, work will be carried out to introduce 5G in all the regional centres of the country. According to the plan that has been made, once the work has been successfully completed, 97 per cent of the population will have broadband Internet access by the end of 2022. For the remaining three per cent of the population, satellite technology will be available. This will contribute to reducing the digital divide between cities and villages. It will also give Kazakh residents the opportunity to make full use of digital technologies, which will give impetus to the development of the Kazakh economy”. 5G, the fifth generation of cellular technology, is designed to increase the speed of wireless services, reduce latency and increase their flexibility. The theoretical peak speed of 5G technology is 20 Gbps (billions of bits per second); I think we should also read carefully the explanation by cisco.com that the peak speed of 4G is one Gbps and that this speed can make it twenty times faster than the old one.
To include also the statement published on 01 October 2019, again on the website of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, will be a clue in our present questioning of “What is happening to us?”
The aim is to digitalise housing and public utilities together with sectors such as agriculture and health. 5G satellite technology can offer data speeds 20 times faster than 4G long-term evolution (LTE) networks and, by offering better support for artificial intelligence and virtual reality with low latency, will give impetus to the government’s plans. It is an important feature for real-time applications such as the control of robot operations or emergency applications for automobiles.”
Local communications experts say that 5G will most probably come online in Kazakhstan after 2020, and we understand that in the statements made in October 2019 it was also conveyed, with emphasis, that the modernised technology infrastructure is something eagerly awaited.
That in all these statements the Wednesday of 2020, which gave notice of the Thursday of 2019, has come and gone is something we can understand today from the current statement on the page of Kazakhstan’s e-government services. The statement made in the infrastructure section, for its part, is as follows: 5G, IMT2020 / 5G The new generation is the fifth generation of mobile communications based on telecommunications standards following the existing 4G / IMT-Advanced Telecommunications Standard. 5G standardisation will be completed in 2021. (3GPP, ITU): According to GSA data, as of the beginning of May 2019 there are 48 models of 5G terminals commercially sold or announced by 26 manufacturers: 16 smartphones, 6 mobile routers, 12 CPE.”
Again, in the lines of the 5G news of October 2019 we also have the information that Kazakhstan is not the only Caspian country trying to launch these services.
Bakcell, Azerbaijan’s first mobile operator, exhibited its 4.5 G Pro technology and its 5G readiness at its stand at the “BakuTel 2017” exhibition in 2017. We have also learned that Bakcell, recognised as “Best in Test” by P3 Communications and as Azerbaijan’s Fastest Mobile Network by “Ookla”, is one of the main investors in the non-oil sector of the Azerbaijani economy. Company officials did not neglect, either, to announce that they are ready to introduce 5G the moment demand for such technologies emerges in the market. That the company at the same time stated its belief that this requires a wider penetration of 5G-enabled devices and that 5G services will therefore not be introduced before 2020: does this not, in your view, signal to us that we need to question more deeply?
And when we follow the signposts carefully, without adding comment to the comments, we can also understand that Russia will most probably be a fast follower and is likewise expected to launch 5G services. According to the GSMA, a trade body representing the interests of mobile network operators worldwide, Russia will have 50 million 5G connections by 2025.
When we look a little more deeply at the planning and practices of the shores of the Caspian Sea in the 5G process, the Caspian Sea agreement signed on 12 August 2018 comes to mind. The negotiations conducted for more than 20 years so that the Caspian Sea could be shared and used by its littoral countries had at last been brought to a close with the agreement signed by the leaders. The Summit of the Heads of State of the Caspian Countries, held in the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, had taken place with the participation of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the President of Iran Hassan Rouhani, the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and the President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. The Thursday traces of this agreement, too, we can see very well from Expo2017, themed “Future Energy”, whose opening took place on 01 June 2017. We can make sense of the system “and be enlightened to the extent that we are able to Read it! The rest, this and that and the other, is a bankrupt lifetime spent without thinking, passed always in he said, she told, he wrote, supposedly, allegedly… Knowledge changes a person’s perception of life!”
Keywords: Kazakhstan EXPO2017 Nurfer Tercan
Translated from the Turkish original.